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Bread

Quick Graham Bread

A quick bread made with sour milk, molasses, salt, baking soda, and graham flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Quick Graham Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sour milk, cooking molasses, salt, and baking soda dissolved in a little hot water.

  2. Stir in enough Graham flour to form a thick batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a well-greased pan.

  2. Bake immediately for 1 to 2 hours until done.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda so the bread rises and gains a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to release carbon dioxide, which leavens the loaf.
Graham flour
Provides the bulk and structure of the bread, along with its nutty, whole-grain flavour.
Cooking molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep, dark color to the crumb.

The step that matters

Bake immediately after mixing. Baking soda starts reacting with the acidic sour milk as soon as they meet. Delaying the bake lets the carbon dioxide escape before the batter sets, so the bread rises less.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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